


Letters From Asgard

by kittydesade



Series: As The World Falls Down: The Loki/Darcy Riff [2]
Category: The Avengers (2012), Thor (2011)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-12
Updated: 2012-04-12
Packaged: 2017-11-03 13:01:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/381618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittydesade/pseuds/kittydesade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Neither Loki nor Darcy is sure about anything between them, except that they can't let go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Letters From Asgard

_My dearest Darcy,_

_You might believe how deadly dull it is here on Camazotz, but not from any description I could give. I've had more entertainment from watching the tides change on Asgard. Everyone talks and talks and does absolutely nothing, it's disgusting. Your planet is full of inane babble and ridiculous, aggressively bright drivel but at least you do things with your lives, you don't just sit around and stare at each other all day debating the rise and fall of the moon..._

Her only excuse was the whole alien with alien technology thing. That was really the only parallel, that and, okay, bringer of chaos, anarchy, and disorder, they had that in common. But the next next time she had an opportunity she forwarded on a printed-out cartoon version of the episode in question, with everything laid out in panels plus description for him to understand. 

_See? There. That. Do that. To my phone._

Loki's response was several days coming, and when it did arrive she fell against the wall and sank down to the floor in necessarily silent giggle fits. He'd written question marks all over the paper, with a concluding line:

"I am not a doctor!"

It took a while before she could set foot out of her room without random bursts of laughter. Then she'd have to explain it to the others. There was no explanation that didn't make her sound like an idiot or like she was hiding something. Okay, so she was hiding something, but not anything that would hurt them. Loki was careful not to tell her about anything he was doing, and after a couple days of thinking it over she was careful not to ask. They could be Switzerland. Not that Switzerland was even Switzerland these days, or ever had been the way people said that, but they could be stereotypical Switzerland. Neutral territory. A place to get away from everyone busy running around putting out fires, or trying to start them in his case. 

Darcy wrapped her arms around herself and leaned forward until her forehead rested on the cool desk and the papers spread out over it. Maybe she _should_ feel more guilty for all of this. The last time he'd come to earth a lot of people had lost their businesses and their livelihoods, a lot of people had been put in the hospital from that monster's rampaging. It wasn't like she had any illusions that he was a Nice Guy Deep Down Underneath It All.

She liked him anyway, though. Sitting up, looking down at the paper with its diagrams and its indignant comment. She was pretty sure he'd only done that to make her laugh. 

Could you be a psychotic world-wrecking bastard and still be adorable and want to make a girl you cared about laugh?

Ooh, there was a dangerous thought. Thinking that he cared about her. She got up from her desk, turned around, paced a circle and dug her hands into her hair till she felt the tug. “Come on, Darcy, don't be an idiot,” she muttered.

Sitting, or more like flopping on her bed, only made her get up and go back to her desk. Because it reminded her of the last couple times in her bed, and the time she'd complained that she was too tired and they were running her ragged, and he got this look in his eyes and tugged her to the edge of the bed and dropped down to his knees and the rest of it was sort of a hazy jumble of getting her knuckles scraped against the wall from flailing and muscles twitching from tension. And now she was thinking of that again, when she didn't want to be. “Stupid, Darcy,” she bounced her head on the desk a bit. “Stupid, stupid, stupid. Work first, play later.”

The silly little comic still lay under her fingers. She picked at the edges for a second, then grabbed it and went stalking the halls for Barton. Somewhere in this damn compound they had to have a decent video library. Time for a marathon of New Who, and some hard questions. Even if she only asked them in her own head.

  


  


  


_Okay, fine. No intergalactic cell phone for me, I can take a hint._

_But you know what that means, right? It means you can't call me when you're having a bad day and need a little pick me up. You are missing out on hot Darcy Lewis phone sex, mister, and I hope you realize what a tragedy that is._

_And, ~~not that you care, but it means I can't call you when I'm having one of those days where everyone just makes me want to scream and I just need someone sane to talk to. I mean, someone who isn't caught up in all of this crap. I know, you've got your own crap. But you always make me feel like you're actually listening, you know, instead of just smiling and nodding and waiting for your turn to rant.~~ besides, sometimes it's just nice to hear your voice. _

No mortal should have this power over him. No Midgardian should be this cruel, unwittingly.   
And yet. His fingers clutched and he pulled her hips down, his body arched against hers, he clenched his jaw shut on the harsh demands he wanted to make in case it came out as begging. He was Loki Odinsson (Laufeyson), with armies to command and power unimaginable to the Midworlders at his fingertips and he did not damn well beg.

Between that minute and one a little later the  _please_  dribbled from his lips and her fingers dug into his shoulders and she was laughing. It  _was_  a beautiful sound.

They collapsed back onto the bed. Her bed, narrow as it was, because everyone else was out and she was supposed to be working on some research data for Jane. He’d popped in halfway through and she’d glared at him and told him sex could wait until it was finished. 

“I think you may want to copy over some of those papers…” he murmured into her hair. 

Darcy blinked and ran a hand down his side and over the bed, then laughed. “Considering you’re lying on them? Yeah, probably.” Hard to say  _what_  might have gotten on the papers, but it was a safe bet Jane wouldn’t want to touch them now. He didn’t particularly care, and even if he had, the sex was worth it.

The time with her was worth it, though he didn’t want to think about that part. Days, months running around the back ways of Yggdrasil, and space was very cold and very empty. Not to the mortals, to them it was open and full of possibilities, but he felt a cold even his Frost Giant blood couldn’t cope with and negotiating his allies and his army was exhausting. And he found himself thinking of the warmth of her tiny bed at the oddest times, her limbs splayed over his and her body making a comfortable weight on his. The sheets on which he slept were cold, when he slept, and the bed far too big for just himself without anyone to share it. 

“Come with me,” he said. He never knew why he said it, but he offered at least once on every long visit, now. Her fingers danced along his ribs.

“And do what? Hang around while you guys talk shop? Needlepoint?” She rolled her head back into the hollow of his shoulder. “Polish your sword, don't even think about it that's not a euphemism. Repair your armor? I’d be bored out of my mind.”

He didn’t think she would, but he never argued over it. Not after the first time, and they’d both stormed off in different directions, his somewhat more upwards and explosive than hers. He found out later from spying on his brother that she’d explained the hole in the ceiling as an experiment with a microwave and some cheap food dish. Even Loki had to admire that one, it sounded like the weakest out of many of Thor’s weak excuses. Less humorous than that was the churning in his stomach, the pain in his chest and the throbbing in his skull, the heat on his face that never seemed to die whenever he thought of that fight. So he resumed courting her, again, and more vigorously. 

She forgave him, of course. Called him names and aimed a couple of punches at his face, one of which even landed, but she forgave him.

“Come with me some day, at least,” he amended, fingers catching in a couple of knots at the bottom of her hair, sweat-matted, he supposed. “For a little while. I think you’ll like what there is to see.”

Darcy turned her head again and propped her chin on his chest, grinning over at him. “What if I already like what I see?”

He smiled back, but he had no idea what to say to that. “Then…” Something. She crawled forward and kissed him instead, which was much better.  Words might be his playthings but this was more than words, and he wasn't playing anymore.

He didn't even know when it had become more than playing. Which was disquieting. Everything about this filled him with uncertainty. Did she realize what he was? What he was trying to do? She was a member of the other team, the other side, he tore apart one of her people's towns with barely a thought and she still smiled at him like that. How could she?

“You're thinking again,” she murmured, and crawled up his body to kiss him. “You should really quit that.”

“I can only agree,” he murmured, before he kissed her back. It didn't take many more kisses between them to make the swirling thoughts pause in their assault.

  


  


  


_Darcy,_

_I've been invited to the summer palace and you should see these mountains. You told me once about the mountain range you climbed with your classmates, and how after a certain height nothing grew. These mountains are higher, I think, than even the tallest peaks on your world and life still finds a way to grow. The air is thin, this close to the stars, but an amazing amount of life, small plants and trees, have found a way to thrive and the shades of green that cover the peaks outside the windows of my rooms are something I think you would truly love to see..._

Darcy read his letters stretched out on the bed with her legs kicked up against the wall in an L-shape that Thor pronounced odd-looking and Natasha said was actually really comfortable. Jane gave her a sideways look when the mail came in and Darcy ran off to her room to read it, but didn't say anything at all. As far as the rest of the team was concerned she had a boyfriend on work-study in Madagascar who spent his whole day around lemurs and didn't know a damn thing about SHIELD. 

The one she really expected shit from was Coulson, who vetted everything that came within a five mile radius of the city the SHIELD base was in. And who surely had to know that those letters weren't coming from Madagascar, but he didn't say anything at all. It made her a little edgy.

But the letters made her smile. Even when Loki went on about things she could barely remember having told him. Clearly he thought mountain climbing was her adventurous side coming out. She got vertigo at the tops of roller coasters. 

It sounded really cool to see, though. Maybe next time he'd send pictures. Somehow.

Funny, when she thought about it, how much he'd wormed his way into her life. He sent her pictures. She sent him comics, cartoon drawings. Caricatures of their daily life, not the top secret parts but pop tarts and Barton over Natasha and Tony and Barton fighting over the remote control. And Tony winning because he had all the best toys. And Coulson treating everyone like kindergarteners. Because they were. 

She didn't know what he did with them, either. For all she knew he balled them up and threw them away. But then again he had the weirdest habit of picking out something that she'd mentioned in passing and bringing it up again weeks later, on his next visit. 

Mountains, huh. She could give him mountains. 

Now and again Bruce brought her flowers, Darcy didn't know really why. He brought all the girls flowers, including Natasha, from some of the random places his work or his research took him. And she hadn't seen him take flowers to the other girls in a while, but she liked them and stuck them between the pages of her stacks and stacks and _stacks_ of books, folded into wax paper, and stole Coulson's laminater and made bookmarks out of them. Just something she half-remembered from elementary school.

Also because it irritated Tony and Natasha that she still read dead tree books. Tony more than Natasha. Everyone else could have bookmarks. 

But there were still a few flowers left over from the last batch, was the point, so she grabbed a couple blank sheets of paper out of the printer and started drawing. Just a quick sketch, a pencil and then crayon drawing of Loki, sitting all cross-legged and zen-like in the mountains of Tibet (or what a Google search told her was Tibet) in front of a temple. And then the flowers, and then she'd have to steal Coulson's laminater again. 

It was a nice break from lab work and lab assisting. Now she just had to figure out what to say in the letter that went with it.

  


  


  


_My freaky darling,_

_I hope you like that because you're stuck with it. I saw a movie the other day, based on a comic book I'm going to make you read the next time you're here. The movie was terrible but the invisible guy had all the best lines. Including the part where he calls the team of motley heroes 'my freaky darlings.'_

_No, I am not calling everyone 'darling.' You try calling Tony Stark 'darling' and see how far you get. No, wait. Do that. I want to see the look on his face._

_Jane managed to melt a computer the other day. A computer. She melted it. Actually she overclocked it until it melted. Kind of like_

She'd scribbled something out there so hard he couldn't make out any of the words.

_revving up an engine till it falls out of the car. I don't think anyone believed she could. I mean, I totally believe it. But no one else could. Thor thought it was the best thing ever, of course._

_He misses you. I figure I might as well say it because I don't think anyone else will, and I know HE won't, but he really does miss you._

Loki perched on the rubble that used to be a small country manor and tried to piece together why Darcy could get away with saying things he would never have forgiven, coming from anyone else.

You should talk to your brother. He misses you. Do you think you'll ever make up with Thor? On and on until he was sick of it, until he wanted to show up just to scream at her to stop asking.

After he calmed down, stopped blasting large chunks of stone into pebbles and took a couple of breaths, after his face cooled again from the flush of anger he could admit at least to himself that it was the first time she'd brought it up. Usually when she wrote to him of Thor it was to tell him the latest foolish thing his brother had done, some meaningless trouble he'd gotten himself into. 

She didn't usually say things like this. Which now made him wonder, now that he had cooled off a little, what Thor had said or done to make her think of telling him this. Had Thor mentioned him? He tried to picture it, her sitting around a table with her friends, talking and eating and laughing and sharing stories. And he wondered for the first time if Thor told stories about him. About when they were young on Asgard.

Darcy never mentioned it if he had. Come to think of it, she had never asked him about his past or about Asgard, not in any specific way. Had he ever done this, or had he ever tried to do that. But no details. Was she scared to ask, he wondered, or did it just not occur to her? Then again, how often did he really ask about her history.

Which led to the strange thought, should he ask? Did she want him to ask?

Loki found a piece of stone that hadn't yet been blasted into dust and perched on it, brooding. He hadn't intended for any of this to happen. He had turned up to bother her on a whim, while he poked around their little headquarters, sometimes with the good doctor Selvig's assistance. She'd been bored and he'd decided to have a little fun. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Every time. She amused him. Diverted his thoughts from their usual wide-circling tracks to something more pleasant, if silly. Idle thoughts.

And somewhere in between then and now it had become less idle. More integral. As he stood on the balcony of the summer palace and surveyed the assembled and drilling soldiers and thought where he would deploy them to be of best use, some part of his mind took note that Darcy might like to see these mountains. He pushed the thought away in irritation and that night the color of his sheets or the way they bunched up when he rolled in the bed made him think of the sheets bunching under her fist where she clutched and writhed. 

He sat up in the middle of the night and swung his legs over the side of the bed and he could all but hear her yawning, rolling over, telling him to go back to sleep they had a big day tomorrow.

Darcy Lewis was a _mortal._ A Midgardian. He'd seen the change Jane Foster had worked in his brother, but that was Thor. He was _Loki_ Odinson. Laufeyson. His jaw clenched while he tried to make sense of it all. This wasn't him. This wasn't supposed to happen to him.

Her letter lay crumpled on the ground where he dropped it. He picked it up and smoothed it out again to try and find the tell-tales of deception, seduction, whatever game she was playing. Against his better judgment he found himself smiling within the first few words. He could hear her saying it, too. _Hello, my freaky darling._

  


  


  


_I refuse to call Tony Stark 'darling', even for your amusement._

He hadn't mentioned Thor. Not in six pages. She figured he wouldn't, but it was a big thing to ignore on six pages of small, neat handwriting. Assuming it was handwriting. Maybe in outer space world they had computers that could print up things that looked hand-written, hell, they could do it here on Earth. Auto-signature. 

“My life has gotten so _weird_ since we met you two,” Darcy muttered to the paper, thinking about that. Before Jane hit Thor with the car, before Loki, the only time she would have used the phrase 'on Earth' would have been hyperbole or talking about a TV show. 

No, she couldn't see him using a computer. He probably did write this.

Which meant he was avoiding talking about Thor. Not that she could blame him. The little bit she knew, half of which she'd been there for, had been pretty chock-full of issues. Big ones. 

Darcy slouched over her desk and scrubbed a hand over her face, wondering what she was doing again. With a guy with issues this huge? This was a little more than just dating some hot-shot who thought he could be in a band, or even one of those jerks she'd thought were cool as an undergrad who wanted to pick out all her sexy underwear and called her up all the time to keep tabs on her. This was the kind of guy who sent down giant robots to smash the shit out of things.

And he was also the guy who held her when she was having a bad day. Who didn't just ask questions but listened to the answers. They talked strategy and politics and he listened without complaint to her bitching about how she wasn't dumber than the rest of them just because she wasn't a genius scientist like Jane. And he didn't tell her that maybe... he didn't offer excuses. He just listened. And told her stories of far off places he'd visited, the things he'd seen. Trying to make her feel better without, she guessed, knowing what would work. Not like she knew what would work either, but he did make her feel better.

So, maybe it was wrong to want him around. Or to care about him. It couldn't be that wrong, though. She didn't help him or give him any information that could give him a target, she was careful about that. She didn't try to get him to go after anyone. She wasn't even trying to get him to stop what he was doing (much), just enjoying the short time they had in between everything else in their lives.

Darcy laced her fingers at the back of her neck and thunked her head against the surface of the desk. It all sounded like justifications inside her head. And there wasn't anyone she could talk to outside of it.

Well, except her boyfriend, and that was such a bad idea she didn't even think seriously about it.

And once she realized that it seemed like she couldn't stop thinking about it. Or talking about it, sideways. Watching stupid Three Musketeers movies and talking about how just because Athos was in love with the traitorous bitch didn't make him a bad person, until Barton and Banner gave her a couple of really odd looks. Digging into her history books and trying to decide what caring about a monster made you, made them. Especially a monster who acted like nothing so much as a loving boyfriend in private.

She'd fallen asleep over those books the next time he showed up, and everyone else off on their missions. Which was probably why he'd shown up. He might have been trying to sneak but once he stepped on a pile of her coloring books and went skidding into her rolling office chair all bets were off. She blinked, looked up and pushed her hair out of her eyes, then almost knocked him over with glomping onto him. 

“Is...” he patted her shoulder for a second while he got his feet under him. “Is everything all right?”

Darcy just laughed, hollow and tired. And hugged him tighter. She felt him sigh against her cheek.

“I suppose not.”

  


  


  


~~_Loki_~~

~~I think we should~~

~~I think I~~

The words rattled around in his skull at the oddest of times. Most often when he looked at her, but sometimes when he sat at the edge of the clouds he’d called up to hide himself and looked at other people. 

Banished he might be, but he still ventured back to the golden city and cloaked himself in a rudimentary disguise, and watched. One woman laughed and her husband or lover pulled her close with an arm around her waist and kissed her cheek, and everyone around them brightened. Another young man, slight and small, Thor would have made endless fun of him, but he held hands with his young lady over the table and spoke earnestly, all his attention fixed on her. Loki couldn’t hear what they were saying and didn’t care to eavesdrop, but the scene stuck.  
Sometimes he dared into the palace, to watch his parents. The people he had thought of for so long as his parents, he didn’t know what they were now. But they knew what they were to each other, he could see that, plain as anything. 

And this was the example he’d had as a child, though he tried not to think about that part. Raised by two parents who loved each other, whatever he might think of their love for their misbegotten stolen son, he knew what it was. Love. He knew it well enough to recognize it no matter what anyone else think.

When he walked in she was going over some notes, head bobbing in time to whatever music was playing in her device. Her hair fell down over her ears and in front of her face while she did so; he didn’t understand how she could read anything through that. One hand came up for a second, adjusted her little earbud, and went back to tracing a diagram, making a note. 

“Darcy…” he started, and his throat swelled and closed up. She hadn’t heard him come in. Walking through walls was a soundless matter anyway. Loki swallowed, licked his lips. “Darcy, I…”

He moved, and the shadow of his body fell across her papers and she looked up and smiled. He smiled back, a weak and tremulous thing compared to her broad grin. At least by that smile, he knew she was better. Better than she had been the last time. “Hey.”

“Hey,” she rocked to her feet and threw her arms around him. She’d changed her shampoo again, they must have been out of that strawberry stuff she was so fond of. He closed his eyes tight and it didn’t last as long as he wanted; it never did. “What’s up, when did you… how long were you standing there?”

“Only a little while,” he shrugged. “What are you working on?”

“Oh, they’ve got me working logistics. Scenarios, what’ll happen if they send Cap into the Middle East and whether or not it’ll completely blow everything to shit…” 

And politics was something he knew very well, balancing diplomacy and force, and all he heard was her voice babbling all their secrets in the one way he would never remember the information afterwards. Her voice, soothing the other voices in his head even though she didn’t mean to, and her tiny hands brushing her hair back, gesturing over the papers. The tilt of her head over her shoulder as she looked up at him, watching him watching her. “You okay?”

He licked his lips, felt the dry surface of his tongue. Opened his mouth to speak. “Well enough. How are you?” Surely that wasn't what he'd meant to say. The trivialities of every visit. 

She gave him the face that didn't believe him eyebrows up under her bangs and lips parted slightly on some sarcastic comment that never came to voice. “Crazy busy,” she said instead, pushing back whatever she was going to call him out on with a few stray strands of her dark hair. “Actually, I could use a break. Want to hit the roof again?”

The tension eased from between his shoulders, and his next breath came as more explosive sigh and smile than he'd thought. “I'd like that. You'd better get your jacket, it's cold outside.” He barely had time to think those tenacious words again before she huddled under his cloak, warm and vibrant in his arms, and they vanished to their rooftop getaway.


End file.
